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Temporary Dog @stonewolf.bsky.social · 8h

I did each thread in a single composition so the only people experiencing it as a flood is someone browsing my profile's media tab

Temporary Dog @stonewolf.bsky.social · 8h

I have now completely poisoned my media tab for anyone looking for fursuits or smut lol

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Temporary Dog @stonewolf.bsky.social · 8h

Ok that's all. From here I'm gonna go land Aigle on Europa and see how it goes! Thanks for reading if you have done, these take ages to do because I have force alt text turned on and they're heavy with kinda technical images.

Temporary Dog @stonewolf.bsky.social · 8h

I could stick a hydrogen generator on there but I didn't exactly gift it with ample hydrogen tanks and I don't want to go looking for uranium and also build a space miner.

So I came up with an innovative solution.

Don't worry about it, nothing to see here!

The back of Space Hopper, you can see the forward engines at the rear end of the outriggers, the connection of the outriggers to the ship, the back of the hull where it actually slopes away from the edges behind the engines, and of course 5 extra batteries slapped on the back.

Frank Drebin from Naked Gun stands in front of an exploded, burning building asking the crowd to disperse as there's nothing to see here.

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Temporary Dog @stonewolf.bsky.social · 8h

I have a grand total of 2kg of refined uranium I looted from a crashed drone. Space Hopper was built with two batteries to power it for one, *maybe* two jumps. I'd need to jump it several times to get the achievement and it was never built with power generation.

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Temporary Dog @stonewolf.bsky.social · 8h

You may remember I had festooned the mining rover with wind turbines, that was the only practical power on Pertam. Adonis I got blown up while I was looking for Uranium and with Adonis II I just flew into space and jumped right to Earthlike's moon where I've run entirely on hydrogen and solar.

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Temporary Dog @stonewolf.bsky.social · 8h

Of course, once I'd built Space Hopper I realised that I could just dock Aigle to it and go finish the achievement for visiting all the celestial bodies and then move on to pastures fresh.

This plan does have a slight snag though.

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Temporary Dog @stonewolf.bsky.social · 8h

I chose a more muted palette for the interior, not that it has much of one, there's a control on the helm to switch the vent between pressurise/depressurise but apart from the cryopods I couldn't fit much else in here.

Standing in an orange corridor we face an open dark blue door into a light blue interior. There are two openings either side and a fan vent at the back.

Taken further into the ship there's a dark blue cryopod on either side of the fan accessed from the rear openings off the corridor.

Standing inside the fore openings and looking across the ship and slightly upward we can see the door on the left, and the opposite rear opening on the right. Opposite us is an identical space to the one we're standing in which just allows us to jetpack up to a higher floor platform behind the window we saw from the outside which has a seat under it.

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Temporary Dog @stonewolf.bsky.social · 8h

While I was still in challenge mind though I built @bestfoxes.com a little jump ship in case they came on again and wanted to come to where I was. This is Space Hopper. It's a little basic but that's deliberate, I think I need practice with large grids in general tbh.

A white ship, somewhat wedge shaped with an orange midline and blue equipment. It has a door above a connector on its nose, and a window above that on the upper slope. Up top is the edge of a jump drive and there are thrusters on the back of the hull and on outriggers.

A view from a higher angle showing the top of the ship is a jump drive with two down thrusters behind it on the rear edge of the hull. An outrigger is also seen better with a forward and retro thruster at either ends of a short conveyor. There's a lateral thruster at the back edge of the hull just above the outrigger.

A view from below where two batteries sit partially covered by panelling and two up thrusters are mounted on the rear edge of the hull.

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Temporary Dog @stonewolf.bsky.social · 8h

I also decided to descope from a full grand tour, the achievement is lifetime rather than per game so actually I've already visited 5/8 celestial bodies and only Europa, Titan, and Triton remain.

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Temporary Dog @stonewolf.bsky.social · 8h

This is part of a change of plans, I was going to build a huge big solar-ion ship and go to another planet and do a new challenge there but I'm getting tired of this playthrough after the space inclinator so I decided to cut the challenge and use this thing instead so I still have to do something.

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Temporary Dog @stonewolf.bsky.social · 8h

This thing has one big hydrogen thruster for getting into space with, two big flat atmospheric thrusters for a gentle landing and a full suite of both atmospheric sand ion thrusters for manoeuvring.

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Temporary Dog @stonewolf.bsky.social · 8h

Now we're getting into real new stuff, this is Aigle. It's designed to be dropped onto a planet with no hydrogen and then filled up with ice, and then take off again. I've not tested it yet, I hope it works but that's why it has a survival kit.

A front quarter view of a small yellow ship built around a single big thruster. It's got long legs with landing gear at the bottom and a ladder on the side. You can't see the top but in evidence is the usual guardrail structure. On this ship the cockpit appears to be below the walkway level though sticking out on front with a gap in the guardrail above. Flanking it are boxy structures with a blue neon rim.

This view from above shows The deck of the walkway covering the whole of the top of the ship with ladders on either side, a gap in the guardrail at the front for the cockpit and at the back for docking. There is a machinery hump in the middle with some small atmospheric thrusters on it. The boxy structures either side of the cockpit are large flat atmospheric thrusters.

From the back the ship looks quite simple. We can see that it's organised as a thick flat brick of machinery with the decking on top and legs and thruster extending below. The rear has a docking connector.

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Temporary Dog @stonewolf.bsky.social · 8h

Some features btw. It has a timer block for one-button power cycle and to avoid accidents there's a small emergency battery that flips recharge status with the main one so the timer block always works. There's also a docking camera and rear facing remote control because no 3rd person view.

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Temporary Dog @stonewolf.bsky.social · 8h

The forward/retro thrusters on all these ships are oddly mounted for a reason, it's to prevent thrusting directly onto the structures in front of (being worked on) and behind (being docked to) and therefore damaging them.

I really like Flat Top, it's a great example of evolving to a strong design.

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Temporary Dog @stonewolf.bsky.social · 8h

This is Flat Top which is a neat little ship I'm very happy with! You can see the direct line of development from Janus through Candor but unlike them this one doesn't have any glaring flaws. The reason for the long thin design is getting into narrow spaces is important but doglegs aren't.

A front quarter view of a welding ship much like the previous illustrations in yellow and blue. It has a welder up front attached to a cargo pod on top of which sits a cockpit with a battery behind it. The cargo pod has a neon tube around its horizontal midline. The lateral thrusters are mounted amidships with their base slightly recessed for compactness. The forward and retro thrusters are paired up off the left side of the cockpit. Down the right side of the ship is a lit up walkway with guardrail.

The reverse quarter view showing the supports for the walkway guardrails and lights. A ladder is mounted to the guardrail forward of the lateral thruster and the up and down thrusters are paired aft of it. There's a docking connector at the back. of the ship and the hydrogen tank can just be seen between that and the lateral thrusters. A comms dish is attached to the up/down thruster pair facing aft.

A view forward standing on the decking over the docking connector. Just aft of the battery is the various electronic and mechanical equipment that completes the ship, all engines plumes are outside the guardrails, and there's a nice clear way down to the right side of the cockpit.

A view of the underside showing the key change, which is a conveyor junction between the cargo pod and the hydrogen tank. This makes the ship slightly longer but provides a connection point for the lateral thrusters. The ship is nicely packaged without anything extending outwards weirdly.

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Temporary Dog @stonewolf.bsky.social · 8h

Now the thruster would normally be off if you wanted to stand there and even if you were climbing up the emergency ladder it was likely to only be producing idle thrust which is "fine".

Anyway there was a ground involved explosion which presented an opportunity to try again!

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Temporary Dog @stonewolf.bsky.social · 8h

You might ask what about grinding, but I really only needed that when I made a mistake and usually with an unwelded block so I could do that by just standing on the decking and hand-grinding it. It wasn't perfect though, the thruster assembly was still awkward and ... well look at the illustration.

Half of a ship showing an illustrative idea of the layout. A cockpit with a battery behind it sits on a cargo pod with decking around one side of it. Behind that is a hydrogen tank in line with the cargo pod and behind that is a down thruster beside a lateral thruster on a stalk. The lateral thrusters plume crosses the back of the ship behind the battery and through the space where you'd walk and on the nearside of the ship is a ladder which places the climber right in that space.

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Temporary Dog @stonewolf.bsky.social · 8h

Janus had an unfortunate encounter with an armoured conveyor tube and being tired with it I just ground it down and built a new one, Candor. This was a much better ship but it also had some flaws. The big innovation was removing the grinder and inlining the cargo, hydrogen tank and connector.

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Temporary Dog @stonewolf.bsky.social · 8h

So what's wrong with this. Well firstly the switch between weld and grind is awkward. Secondly the docking connector is on the side up on that raised bit so it has to be operated with a remote control to change the control directions. Thirdly it's big. Fourthly the thruster assembly is all weird.

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Temporary Dog @stonewolf.bsky.social · 8h

Soooo, what replaced Meatball then? The answer is Janus which is a double-ended ship with a welder on one end and a grinder on the other which made a lot of sense except actually it was dumb and awkward and I hated it.

Allow me to explain with the aid of a partial recreation of the ship.

A partial recreation of a yellow and blue ship with two cockpits facing opposite directions and a walkway between on them on the side facing the viewer. There's a ramp over a hump in the middle that goes to a connector on the side with all the thrusters underneath it.

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Temporary Dog @stonewolf.bsky.social · 8h

Remember that abortive space elevator? Well, I needed to grind it down so I built a ship specially for it, Steeplejack.

I love this ship, it's so good. I kept using it for random tasks until I built Thunderbird. I'm particularly happy with the rear end.

I sacrificed it to take out a hostile drone.

Beside an orange industrial structure a green tower extends way up towards the sky.

A blocky brick of a ship mainly in yellow with some blue parts. It has big tanks on the corners with chunky piping over the top. Down the sides and between the piping are some blue trusses. At the front is a blue cockpit with a little decking in front of it above a docking connector. At the back can be seen some thrusters including the rather creative placement of a retro-thruster between the top piping firing into a space intentionally left void.

A side view of the ship, between the corner tanks and under the piping is a cargo container. Hung off the back is a cluster of thrusters in different directions and a battery. We can see the grinders that hang from under the ship.

Seen from the back we can see two up thrusters (they face down) with batteries sitting on top of them, one on each side of the back with a forward thruster between them. Above that is the piping for the retro thruster and small down thrusters flanked by the lateral thrusters.

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Temporary Dog @stonewolf.bsky.social · 8h

When Meatball had a terrible accident I didn't rebuild it because I didn't need it but later I needed a rescue ship because I'd run out of hydrogen a couple of times and Meatball's design was basicly perfect for that so I built Thunderbird which is *almost* the same ship.

A blue and yellow small ship docked to an orange structure. It has a nice lit up decking with guard rails on top around the cockpit.

A picture of it from the front so you can see how it's built from two big hydrogen tanks with a conveyor slung between them and a cockpit sitting on top. Some trusses extend upwards off the tanks to which are attached guard rails and lights for the decking that forms most of the top surface surrounding the cockpit.

The back, this has a second docking port and on one side a ladder. You can also see the battery attached to the back of the cockpit with a little comms dish bolted to it. On the side of the hydrogen tank nearest the viewer is a pod with various thrusters for different directions.

A screenshot taken from the cockpit showing it's a textured dark blue with olive screens featuring yellow text and graphics.

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Temporary Dog @stonewolf.bsky.social · 8h

Because the jetpack is heavily nerfed I kept falling off things all over the place while trying to place/weld stuff so I made a ship that's basicly a platform that can hover for ages.

Soon after I built it I learned from youtube that cockpit building is a thing which made it basicly obsolete.

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Temporary Dog @stonewolf.bsky.social · 8h

We saw Adonis I & II already and Bedstead which is kind of a ship but we've not looked at the small stuff. I did jump into creative to grab some things from my blueprints and make some quick explainers.

Anyway, this is Meatball, I didn't intend for it to be Swedish, I just liked the colour combo.

A blue and yellow small ship docked to an orange and green structure. It has a nice lit up decking with guard rails on top around the cockpit.

A bit of a different view showing it in more detail, we can see the docking port on its front flanked by two big magnetic plates. We can also see it's festooned with floodlights.

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